Lanette Hansen's Blog

Girl Power?

by Lanette Hansen,posted Feb 22 2013 12:01PM

Something I find myself saying a lot is...'If women in general, had each other's backs rather than trying to claw each other's eyes out, we'd be running this planet." We as a gender have hindered the flexing of our muscles with opinions, judgements and stereotyping. I'm facinated by the Marissa Mayer story. She's the newest, youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, that being Yahoo. When she took the job she was five months pregnant and mentioned that she'd take a couple weeks off for maternity leave and would be working from home during those couple of weeks. Marissa was on the Today Show this week revealing the new Yahoo look. She said how easy-going her son, Macallister, now four months old, is and how lucky she is as a working mom for that to be the case. Now the arms are up and hard-working moms everywhere are threatened by her story. How are we 'regular' moms who would in many cases, love to stay home with our kids but can't because of financial reasons supposed to compete with that? Is my employer going to expect that out of me? The U.S. is already WAY behind most other countries for appreciating the bonding of a mom and baby in the first few months and year of his/her life. That's easy to see with the ZERO paid maternity leave we have vs. many other countries that give mom months if not a year, of paid leave.

I think we're threatened as women by Marissa Mayer's choice to go back so early for a couple different reasons. The girl power our feminist sisters worked SO hard for to get us even to the point that we're at now seems almost a lost cause and we're a little jealous that she's got the capabilities, financial backing and energy to be able to head up a company two weeks after bringing a tiny human into the world. The pull between being a mom and being a working woman is a hard one to pull off. With it comes a lot of guilt. You want to be home with your family yet you want to fulfill the need to accomplish your career goals. It's not supported by our country's economy but even sadder than that...no matter what...it doesn't seem to be supported by our fellow sisters. It's like you can't win! There's no trophy for going back to work asap and there's no Super Bowl ring for staying home and raising your family. At some point, we will need to be okay with the fact that it's all okay!

If you don't like that Ms. Mayer went back to work so quickly, then don't do it yourself. If you think a stay-at-home mom is out of the question, then don't do it. But for Pete's sake let's trust our fellow sisters that they're doing the best for their family. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can get on with life and of course, start running this planet. :)